Retail Platform Websites

A consequence of the Covid 19 pandemic has been a dramatic increase in online shopping. Analysts expect this trend to continue. Within food markets the bulk of this shift in consumer behavior has been towards using either supermarkets online retail services, or to startup online food retailers in the global industrial food chain. It has also significantly increased demand for online food retail systems that have been developed for local sustainable food producers.

Instacart

Ocado

The opportunity to grow sustainable, local food systems by catering to this shift in consumer behavior is potentially profound, but doing so requires a high degree of co-operation among independent producers. If we hope to do more than swap one master for another, it is also critical that we pay attention to the ownership of the platform websites we use and support. To mitigate for the possibility of these platform websites facilitating the continuation of centralized power dynamics withing the food system, we must pay attention to the accessibility of the source code, the intellectual property license of the software, and the treatment of data. We want open source code, creative commons intellectual property licenses, and transparency and accountability of data management.

Leading the charge on developing open source software appropriate to short supply chain regional food networks is the Open Food Network. Other retail platform systems, such as Boxmaster Systems are designed for specific business models, and may be more convinient for your operation for this reason. This platform is not protected by an open source license, however. Significant growth in the use of this platform would therefore give Boxmaster a certain amount of power and control over the share of the market that is administered through their system, which does not necessarily entail an abuse of power, but it does make it possible.

https://community.openfoodnetwork.org/uploads/default/original/2X/c/c0b5dbc791b364f77aea4584cf500663b163fa84.pdf